An amateur here

[jonathan]

Hi, I'm interested to purchase vBET. I am only familiar with PhpBB and don't actually have Vbulletin yet. The only reason I would purchase VBulletin is for vBET. There isn't something like this for other forums are there?

My interest in vBET is because I want my posts in English to be translated into many languages and for the translated posts to be permanent. This is my understand of what's so good about vBET as compared. Am I right?

My biggest concern is the issue of whether the forum (and all the languages) will be indexed by google and other search engines. I'm not an expert in all this but have read that what your forum program seems to do violates some of googles rules and therefore there may be detrimental effects in the long term. Is that so?

Also, if I do want to purchase vBET, do you think a pretty newbie like me who hasn't really used VBulletin (only PhpBB) and don't know much programming would be able to get a simple VBulletin + vBET up and running? I see so many technical questions that I don't want to have to confront - if I do have to solve them, I may as well quit from the start because I know I won't be able to do so.

Also, do I need to get VBSEO?

Thanks.

[vBET]

At this moment vBET is working only on vBulletin.

Yes vBET will translate your posts to different languages. Also will do more. You users will be able to post in any supported languages and you will see it as in actually chosen language. That is how vBET supports multi-lingual community

Google and other search engines will index your translated pages because those are using different URLs - just check our forum it is using vBET We are not breaking any of Google rules. vBET is 100% compatible with Google TOS - we even have automatic cache cleaner to cach results not longer than 15 days as Google requires. We are 100% OK for Google Terms of Service

Installation of vBET is easy and well described in readme file. Also it doesn't require any programming skill. Just upload files on server and import product file by vBulletin Admin Control Panel. Also for those who want us to do the installation we offer installation service for $30. Most technical questions on our forum are about integration with other mods which breaks vBulletin architecture - those mods which are appropriate with vBulletin architecture do not require any integration with vBET

You do not need vBSEO - vBulletin 4.x have its own friendly URLs and vBET supports translation of those

If you have any more questions - please just ask

[jonathan]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply. I do have a few follow-up questions:

1) "we even have automatic cache cleaner to cach results not longer than 15 days as Google requires. "

Are the translated pages real pages? I'm not sure what "cache" means but does all this mean that after 15 days the posts will be deleted? Or will all the posts in different languages be there forever and indexed in google forever?

2) Have there been instances of people using vBET running foul of google and getting their page unindexed or their ratings by google suffering in any way?

Thanks
Jonathan

[vBET]

Hi,

Answering your questions:

1) No it doesn’t meant that post will be deleted. Please note: YOUR CONTENT IS SAFE. vBET will not remove any real content. Translation results can be cached in vBET in many forms - we support database cache, full file Guest cache, memory cache. It means that translations which comes from Google of Microsoft are stored on your server. Thanks that next translation is much faster, because you already have translation results stored on your server - you do not have to ask outside server and wait for results came back by network. And vBET supports also automatic cleaner for this cached results (real content - this which was given by users no matter in which language is always safe ). Please note that cleaner is also fully configurable

2) We had cases, when users where temporary blocked by Google and couldn't translate anymore. But each time it was because they didn't set Google translation key in vBET configuration. Also each time after setting that and mailing Google back they was unblocked and everything went fine. Also there was case about un-indexed pages - but if I remember right, it was issue with wrong robots.txt content which was blocking robots. Please note that all issues history you can find in this very forum - everything is here. So you can see all closed and still open cases from now and from previous. We are proud our product and we are proud we can help our customers when issues appears

[jonathan]

Thanks Michal,

I appreciate your responses. I really want to purchase this and use it but I still need some questions answered and some assurances because I'll be spending on the vbulletin software and also vBET. If it doesn't work out for one reason or another, it'll be a waste of $300 for me!!

1) I'm not sure exactly how the cache works. Am I right to say that everytime a post is written in a language, it's translated to other languages and stored in cache in my server for 15 days. What happens after that? The translation is cleared and then retranslated again for another 15 days?

During all this time, would my results in all the languages be searchable by google forever? Would these cache creation and cache cleaning affect my content being indexed by google?

2) Can I limit the number of translations I want vBet to translate into? I'm assuming that the more the translation, the more the load on the server?

3) Can I use a normal shared hosting by the server? Would a normal shared hosting be OK or does vBet require additional resources (VPS) for the program to function?

Thanks for your help!

[vBET]

Hi,

No problem - just ask if you need Answering your question:
1) NO - posts are not translated when are written. Posts are translated on demand - when someone comes to translated thread page then post is translated and go to cache. And if it is in cache then it is taken from cache. If cache is flushed. Then it is not in cache, so it will be translated and go to cache again. And so on

All your pages will be searchable in Google. And yes it will affect your content being indexed - it will grow, because after installing vBET Google will index also your translated pages

2) Yes - it is fully configurable. For each language you have checkbox seeing will it be supported - you just uncheck languages you do not want to support on your forum and save settings (by vBulletin Admin Control Panel - configuration page).

3) There is no 1 answer. Everything depends on your forum size. If you have large forum then you must have VPS/dedicated server, no matter will you use vBET or not. We was starting on shared server. Where we had 4 forums on one account (2 real and 2 test). After some time when forums grown up we had to move. If your forum will grown from 0then you can save some money at the beginning and start on shared servers. Still when it will grow up you will have to move even if you do not use vBET. Shared servers are not for applications which made too much traffic. No matter is it forum or anything else.

If you have any more questions - please just ask

[jonathan]

Thanks Michal,

You wrote:
"NO - posts are not translated when are written. Posts are translated on demand - when someone comes to translated thread page then post is translated and go to cache."

I'm not sure I understand this. For example, say I write a post in English and I'm targetting someone hopefully in a spanish speaking country to read it. If the post is not translated first straight away (or are they for the first time at least?), then how is the spanish speaking person going to know that I wrote that post if it's only in google in English?

For example, I may write a post in English, "The food is good at this restaurant". Will it be straight away translated and indexed as "La comida es bueno en este restaurante"? I don't want him to search in English or that will defeat the purpose of what I want to do. I don't want him to use his limited English, but assume that he knows no English at all and is searching in his language. Is this what vBet does or I am mistaken?

Thanks.

And are you planning to do this for other forums?

[vBET]

It will not be in Google only on English, because Google is crawling your forum - it means Google also goes to translated links. So we have demand for translation and page gets translated.

This is very simple - content will be translated first time when someone will go to the translated page first time. It doesn't matter will it be real person or Google robot. Content is cached. And after cache expires it is flushed and filled again when someone asks for translation of something which is not cached yet.

So when you write your post in English, then it will be translated on demand - when someone will ask for translation. Google will crawl your pages so it will also ask for translation, so it will get translated content and index your translated page. So person who do not know English will find your page by searching in his own language as fast as Google will index the page.

Yes we plan to made more generic tool which would be able to support translations on other environments, but still we have some features which we want to integrate first before we open new line of product. There is no any deadline for this at this moment.